Iran Feature: "Oil-Spill Sabotage To Block Strait of Hormuz" --- How Western Media Spreads a Scare Story
Monday, October 15, 2012 at 11:16
How Iran's head of armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, might sabotage the Strait of Hormuz
A case study in how scary rumour and the "information" from Western intelligence agencies becomes headline news across the world....
On Sunday afternoon, an EA correspondent pointed me to a story in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, "Environmental Disaster as a Weapon: Iran Is Planning Tanker Sabotage in the Gulf". The article's lead paragraph:
Mohammed Ali Jaafari, the hard-line commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Admiral Ali Fadavi --- according to the Western intelligence --- have developed a sabotage plan that threatens the entire Gulf and could lead to an environmental disaster. The Top Secret plan, code-named "Murky Waters" and the classification "Top Secret", would widely contaminate the Strait of Hormuz through a deliberately-caused oil tanker disaster.
According to the supposed plan, Western nations would need Iran's technical help to clean up the Strait, a vital shipping lane, and restore transport of oil. The Islamic Republic, in return for this assistance, would insist on the lifting of sanctions.
The only problem? The story had no source other than the mysterious "Western intelligence" officials who were feeding it to Der Spiegel.